


Your Best Self

by lbmisscharlie



Category: Captain America (Movies), Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Gen, Inspirational Speeches, POV Outsider, Steve Rogers Inspirational Speeches, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, Those PSAs though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-15
Updated: 2017-06-15
Packaged: 2018-11-14 08:34:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11204325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lbmisscharlie/pseuds/lbmisscharlie
Summary: Hestia Studios is the PSA production company that goes the extra mile. With us, you can be assured of the highest production values, a perfectly-crafted script, and guidance every step of the way. No matter the size of the project or the audience, we'll make sure your message is heard.Or; Steve Rogers, a high school gym, and a script that needs re-writing.





	Your Best Self

Their talent is late. 

It’s a stretch, in this business, calling them talent, but at least most of the actors deign to show up on time before woodenly warning people not to text and drive.

Alexandra checks her phone, texts Aya to see if she wants Thai or pizza or Thai pizza for dinner, picks at her nails. She gets paid hourly, so it’s no real sweat, but they’re filming in an actual high school gym and it has that smell. Too many hormones in too small a space. 

Ray has decided to fuck off somewhere and smoke, so it’s just her and the ready-and-waiting camera equipment. The florescent lights make everything look a little sickly, and she hopes whoever Janine has cast doesn’t need much makeup. Not that anyone gets much help in that department from Hestia Studios; their makeup department is her and a baggie full of Revlon. 

Behind her, a door opens, that click-slam that public high school gym doors make. “I apologize – I’m late, I’m so sorry.” The guy sounds actually apologetic, and when she stands and turns around, he’s stepping towards her with his hands out, palms up.

Wearing a full Captain America suit, cowl, boots and all. Method, damn.

“You must be Dominique,” he says, holding his hand out to shake as he gets closer.

She takes it, but says, “Dominique’s out sick –” hungover – “I’m Alexandra.” 

“So nice to meet you,” he says, giving her a firm double-pump handshake. Under the cowl, his eyes are very blue. He looks – he looks _a lot_ like Captain America. Janine’s getting better at spotting talent, it seems. When they’d tried to do a Tony Stark anti-bullying thing, the guy she’d sent had been five-foot-two. And a redhead.

She peers at him. At his jawline. “Do you do this regularly?”

“The PSA thing?” He rubs at the back of his neck. “Nah – I wasn’t even going to do this, but it’s a favor to a friend. Well, the grandson of a friend.”

“No, I mean the whole Captain America impersonation thing. You’re _really_ good. You’ve got the jawline for it and everything.”

He doesn’t say anything for one long moment, then lifts his hands, unbuckles the strap at his chin, and pulls his cowl off. Underneath, he’s a little sweaty, hair darkened and tousled, but when he smiles at her, it’s like a picture from her history book come alive.

“Uh,” she says. 

Ray chooses that moment to come back inside, slamming the gym doors open with a dramatic thrust. He gives Actual-Captain-America a once-over and says, “Holy shit, Janine actually did her job. You really do look like him.”

Actual-Captain-America sighs, sticks out his hand, and says, “Steve Rogers, nice to meet you,” a little pointedly. 

Ray’s mouth drops open a little, but he reaches his hand out, too, says something that sounds even less eloquent than Alexandra’s inarticulate, “Uh.” 

“Ray Sternfeld, camera person,” Alexandra supplies, because Ray looks like he might vomit a little. 

“Pleasure,” Steve Rogers says, then spreads his hands open. “How does this work?”

Alexandra shows him the camera set-up and explains that they’ll be doing one shoot here, another in the locker-lined hallway, and a final one in one of the labs. He nods along politely, stepping through the moves they’ve blocked in tape on the gym floor easily. Ray’s recovered himself and makes some lighting adjustments, Captain America standing patiently while he gets a few white balance readings against the vibrant blue of the suit.

She’s gesturing him to his starting cue when he frowns a little and says, “What do you want me to say, though?”

“Uh,” she says, because Dominique was supposed to send the script out to the talent beforehand. She’s got a copy here, but if he doesn’t know the lines yet they might be here all day. She scrunches her nose a little. “Dominique didn’t send you a script?”

He shakes his head. He somehow manages to make that look apologetic, too, and goddamn, did that _gee shucks I’m sorry_ face come standard in the Depression? She knows of no men her age who can make even the most heartfelt apology sound like anything but postmodern fatalism. 

“I got a copy,” she says, digging in her bag. The pages are only a little creased. “That first page is the fitness challenge. What we’re doing here,” she says, pointing to the gym around them a little awkwardly. 

He reads it. A little crease appears between his eyebrows. He flips the page. Each scene is pretty short, around a page each: the fitness challenge, the detention talking-to, the don’t do drugs okay message. After he gets to the last page, he flips it over, sees that there’s no more, flips back to the front. He looks down at the papers in his hands for a moment before lifting his chin to look at her again.

“Ma’am,” he starts, and she thinks she could actually die, because managing to stay cool when Captain America is making concerned eyebrows at her is not actually in her pay grade. “It’s not that I’m opposed to any of this. And I’m happy to do Jimmy a favor. But – did you write this?” he interrupts himself. She shakes her head; it’s Dominique’s usually cheesy fair, hardly Shakespeare, but she has no idea what’s in it that’s got Captain America all het up. 

“Well,” he continues, “a fitness challenge is great and all, and I’m sure happy to teach proper form and that, but they do know this only happened because of Stark’s finest, right?” He sort of does a little gesture down his torso, and her eyes maybe do follow his hand down a little, because she might be gay but that spangled chest is a thing of beauty. 

“Uh,” she says again. “I mean, I don’t think they’re expecting you to inspire any high schoolers to single-handedly fight aliens, or anything.” 

He gives her a small, sideways smile and holds out the script. “No, but this line – ‘If you keep it up, you’ll be as strong and fit as a superhero, too’ – I mean, they won’t all be. People are built different – kids who are bigger, kids who are sick –”

“Shit,” Alexandra says, and then thinks _I just cursed at Captain America_. He doesn’t seem phased. “Yeah, I see what you mean. Uh, I can try to call Dominique? See if she can re-write it?” She’s cursing Dominique inside, now, too.

“Well – would you mind if I –?” he’s holding up a pen – where was he keeping a pen? – and gesturing to the script.

“Oh! Sure.” She’s seen that ‘90s Heath Ledger Captain America movie, and the newer one, that one that came out just before he was found in the ice, the one with what’s-his-name from _Pacific Rim_ ; Captain America’s always been good at a rousing speech. 

He thinks for a moment, peering at the page, then jots down a couple of words. She can’t really read his handwriting.

“While we’re at it,” he says, and she maybe would suppress a sigh except he’s looking at her with that face again. Ray drops something; it clatters to the ground behind them.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says, ducking behind the camera when they look over. He doesn’t really need to duck; the camera towers over him by a good eight inches.

“You have other changes you want to make,” she guesses, and watches as Actual Captain America Steve Rogers shrugs his shoulders up, like he’s a little bashful. 

“Seems a little hypocritical of me to tell kids to stay out of detention, is all,” he says, “seeing as I was in it damned near every week as a kid.” She blinks. He must take her slightly dumbfounded expression to be concern, because he clarifies, “Only sometimes for fighting! Just – some teachers had real mean streaks, you know, and I couldn’t stand to see them turn on some of the other kids.”

She thinks she blinks again; she might be in love. “Yeah,” she says. “Uh. Could we, um, spin it somehow?” She thinks they can; he’s spoken a dozen sentences to her, and she’s ready to jump on a bully on Captain America’s say-so right now. He grins at her, broadly; she wants to die. 

“Great!” he says, scribbling a couple of notes.

“Any other changes?” The last one’s a pretty standard stay-away-from-drugs PSA; surely he can’t have any issues with it.

“Well,” he says, and she closes her mouth. “I was sick a lot, before all the –” he doesn’t gesture at himself this time, thank god, she couldn’t take it – “and cannabis is a very effective pain-management treatment.” 

++

They scrap the anti-drug one, because once started Steve can’t stop talking about how the war on drugs is a racist, capitalist tool for cheap prison labor. He’s right, but Alexandra also likes her job. She thinks about asking him if they can put it up on youtube, though. 

The other two only require one take each. She knew he’d been on stage and stuff, back in the war, but isn’t prepared for the bright, encouraging smile and the friendly head-tilt he adopts as soon as the camera starts rolling the first time. As soon as he finishes his lines, he shakes that pose off and looks to her for approval, and she’s not able to do much more than nod.

The second one he starts spread-legged over a backwards chair; the staging was not her idea, either, she’d like the record to reflect. But by the final lines his voice is low, a little gravelly, and he’s leaning forward with one hand against his knee, like he’s imploring the viewer. When that take finishes, he doesn’t look at her at all for a long moment.

In the end, the production quality is pretty shitty, because there’s really no solving for high school gymnasium florescent lights, but the two short films are still Alexandra’s favorite thing she’s made for Hestia Studios. In the editing process, she copies a couple of segments to her phone, though she wouldn’t admit it if asked. But really, some days when the going’s tough, she closes her eyes, presses play, and listens to Captain America.

> “…and each day you try the best you can that day. It’s okay if it’s not as many push-ups as you did yesterday, or if you can’t run as fast as your best friend. You do your best, right now; that’s all any of us can do. You don’t need to be strong on the outside to be strong on the inside.”

> “So you got detention. You know what, that’s okay. Sometimes everything in the world gets the better of us and our better instincts. Sometimes we make choices we wish we could take back. Unfortunately, we can’t go back. You just gotta move forward. Make amends where you can and do better where you can’t. Find the people who believe in you and try to be the person they see. I believe in you, and I think your tomorrows are going to be better than today.”

**Author's Note:**

> So I had feelings in the tags of [that detention PSA clip](https://lbmisscharlie.tumblr.com/post/161721457076/spideycentral-new-spider-man-homecoming-tv-spot) and then it turned into a fic. The good people of tumblr seem to have deduced that the PSAs were filmed sometime around/after the first Avengers movie, when I figure Steve probably thinking about the way his decisions in life have turned out (but then, when is he not?). The friend he's doing a favor for is Principal Morita from _Spider-Man: Homecoming_ , Jim Morita's grandson (I've named him Jimmy here, but I don't know if he has a first name in canon).
> 
> Follow me over on [tumblr](https://lbmisscharlie.tumblr.com/) for more feelings about beefy tender men.


End file.
